Growth of egg freezing blurs 'experimental' label
By Alison Motluk,
Nature
| 08. 23. 2011
The first thing that Alison Hopkins did after finishing her PhD was
freeze 14 of her eggs. She knew she wanted children, but she was 38 and
didn't have a partner. "It buys you time, it eliminates any pressure,"
she says. "I thought it was a really good insurance policy."
For such women, however, egg freezing is "a shot in the dark", says
Hopkins' fertility specialist, John Jain, who heads Santa Monica
Fertility in California. Very few of the older women who have frozen
eggs to beat the clock have tried to use them, says Jain. He estimates
that, worldwide, fewer than ten babies have been born from eggs frozen
for women aged 38 or over. And no one knows how successful the freezing
and thawing of older eggs will be — despite the fact that most women now
seeking the service are over 38.
These uncertainties are reflected in the recommendations of the
American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) — the advisory body to
the fertility industry — but not in the practices of its members, even
some of...
Related Articles
CGS is excited to announce the launch of a new anti-eugenics initiative that has been years in the making. Legacies of Eugenics in Science, Medicine, and Technology kicks off with a monthly essay series published at the Los Angeles Review of Books that will expose and contest the reemergence of eugenic ideas in contemporary health sciences, human biotechnology, public health, and medicine. Community and campus-based events featuring the authors are also being planned. The project is a collaboration among CGS...
By Jason Kehe, Wired | 04.11.2024
God help the babies! Or, absent God, a fertility startup called Orchid. It offers prospective parents a fantastical choice: Have a regular baby or have an Orchid baby. A regular baby might grow up and get cancer. Or be born...
By Neel Shah, The Preprint | 04.11.2024
Years ago, I interviewed for a residency position at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Standing before the domed Victorian building at the campus entrance, I couldn’t help but be in awe of the history of the place, the great...
By Eleanor Hayward and Joanna Crawford, The Times | 03.29.2024
Gazing out at the Mediterranean from an idyllic rocky mountaintop, Sophie Hermann announced to her half a million Instagram followers that she had decided to freeze her eggs. Since that post in August, the 37-year-old former Made in Chelsea star...